I have recently joined, I have been off my bike for 3 years due to injury and then laziness i did have a FTP of over 230 and enjoyed riding about 6,000 miles a year.
When i joined i uploaded a new a ride through either Strava or Garmin connect the system gave me a starting off point of 120 FTP which i went with i have uploaded 5 rides and gave me a FTP 133 and then realised that Garmin and Strava had both uploaded rides but not duplicates, so i decided to delete them all and upload from Garmin 520 with the stored rides, at that time my FTP was 131 after inputting all the rides again it now gives me an FTP of 200W starting point and after the 5 rides its now 194 as i have been training at the wrong FTP … i have not uploaded any of my old rides …is there an explanation for this
i would not worry too much about your starting point. In Xert, your fitness signature is dynamic and updated once you put a few rides in. I would recommend to ride and give it your best effort for an hour or so; hard pace, a few 30s to 60s go hard efforts like a race. You will likely get a breakthrough. Train with xert and repeat this hard ride every 3-4 weeks to refresh your fitness signature. That should do the trick.
Agree it’s good to go for a breakthrough every few weeks or so, though it depends on training phase and decay setting. More broadly it’s worth understanding signature decay and the options:
The reduction in TP is not likely due to training at the wrong intensity (from the OP), but due to decay. So on the default ‘optimal decay’ your signature will decay even if Training Load is constant or even slightly increasing. Makes it easier to trigger future breakthroughs and keep your signature accurate. During a base phase it’s good to use ‘no decay’ as you don’t train at an intensity to trigger breakthroughs. Just put it back to optimal or small later…
Thanks for the reply, I have read through the decay which is very interesting… but it was more to do with the estimate that Xert gave me at the beginning 120TP and still kept giving after 5 rides 133 TP then after I upload the rides again to Xert and it gave me a TP of 194 which meant I was riding at the wrong zones due to the under estimate of TP… after reloading the rides it gave me a starting of 200 TP and as I was riding at 120 TP it has lowered my overall TP number …it’s a huge difference between 120 TP and 200 TP …even for an estimate
Ok, thought you were wondering about the TP reduction over time
The other issue is tough to say…, if it was the same five rides and same data it should be the same… If you’re worried you can write the Xert support team, but I’d just follow the other advice from @jyhudon and just go for a BT, either through one of the designated workouts (search breakthrough) or just some all out efforts of different durations, to failure… The more rides you upload over time, the more accurate it will be
Sorry just another question if you don’t mind, would I be right in thinking after reading up on decay I would be better with it off (no decay) as I don’t have a full training log, just 5 rides and on base training
Xert requires a variety of recent historical power data on file to establish your fitness signature. Those experienced with power training can alternately enter starting values based on their current power curve.
As @wescaine and @jyhudon suggest you need some BT-style rides on file for Xert to properly calculate your signature.
Search the workout library for “breakthrough” to see the types of effort required.
Select the workout title to view details in the Workout Designer (scroll down to view table).
If you don’t have a trainer to do this you’ll want to reproduce similar activity on the road including warm-up, sustained efforts at various focus duration, plus a few all out sprints to establish your PP.
Continue to toss in a BT workout/ride every so often to keep your signature in check.
You will be warned by XATA to do this whenever your signature becomes stale.